Ice Cream in January, or Seeing Harold
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: A chilly day in January, a vanilla ice cream cone, and an artist.
1. Ice Cream

_Ice Cream_

If anyone had asked Grace what she saw in such an odd, awkward, by-no-means handsome person as Harold Bird, she would have been a little at a loss. Her mind would have flooded with all the things she saw, and she would have been unable to articulate any of them.

First into her mind would come the ice cream cone. How one chilly day in January she looked up from her painting and saw a man standing there with a vanilla ice cream cone. In January. It made her smile, that picture and all its peculiarity. That was the first thing she saw in Harold, that he was peculiar.

"Hello," he said, not as if he had anything particular to say, the way people come up to artists painting in public, but as if he just wanted to say hello.

"Hello," she said and waited for what else he would say, because he had an air about him of intelligence and a little shyness, and because, with that occasional insight she had, she knew that there was a depth of gentleness in him, and that was the second thing she saw in him. There had been ungentle people in her life, and her tranquility-loving heart fled from them and, instinctively, _to_ the few truly gentle people she knew.

"Would you like some ice cream?" He held out his cone.

Grace laughed. "No, thank you. I find it a little cold for ice cream."

He looked down at the cone and gave a rueful, sideways smile. "I suppose you're right. It's not even melting."

Grace laughed again, and he smiled with her, and that was the third thing she saw, that he had a quiet, understated sense of humor. She gathered together her courage, because she _never_ did this sort of thing, and said, "But I wouldn't mind some tea, when I've finished this figure."

He slowly smiled, and that was when she saw the fourth thing, which was that the peculiarness and the intelligence and the gentleness and the humor were all animated by something that turned him from an odd-looking, awkward, bespectacled, middle-aged man into someone very attractive.

He leaned against the railing and slowly ate his ice cream cone with a deliberate attention to detail, which was how she saw that he was a man of method and care. And he had not introduced himself, which made him utterly a mystery.

When he finished his ice cream, he wiped his hands carefully on a napkin, folded it up into precise squares, and put it in his pocket, then came around behind her and looked at her painting, which made her feel shy.

"I like your perspective," he said, which was different. "I like the accuracy of the city line and the pure fancy of the figures. I think—forgive me—I think I almost understand what you mean."

"That is what every artist wishes." She surveyed her painting with a sigh. "I fall short so often."

He didn't say those things that everyone says when you dare to deprecate your own work. He tilted his head to examine the painting and seemed to take her at her own evaluation. "No one is ever a success a hundred percent of the time, but one success can be worth all the failures." And he smiled his sideways smile again with a deep and almost gleeful inner satisfaction, which was how she saw that he was made up of secrets.

Grace threw down her paintbrush and smiled back. "I'm done for today. And freezing."

"Then allow me to give you tea."


	2. Dickens

_Dickens_

Tea was in a nearby coffee shop which really did tea and didn't just pay lip service to it. It was a quirky place with a wall full of teacups and another wall full of books, coffee books jumbled haphazardly together with cookbooks, novels, and biographies. Feeling a little shy and like she had suddenly gone insane, Grace got in line, while the man she seemed to have picked up examined the bookshelves. (_Picked up?_ She didn't _pick up_ men!) She saw his hand go out and seize a book, which he brought over with a suppressed air of triumph.

"It's the only one of his I haven't read. I was saving it for…something special."

She looked at it, and her eyes went wide. _"The Mystery of Edwin Drood?_ I just read that few months ago. I'd never read it before, either."

His eyebrows went up, though he didn't look actually surprised. Had he already pegged her for someone who loved Dickens? "Well, don't tell me what happens. Or what doesn't happen, since it was never finished."

"What were you saving it for?"

"For something that would always make me remember, _This was what I was doing when I read the last book Dickens ever wrote."_

"Oh." Suddenly she blushed and looked away. "Don't you just love Dickens?" she blurted out, to cover it. It sounded stupid when she said it.

"Yes," he said softly. "I do. Do you have a favorite?"

"All of them," she said with a laugh. "I like each one best while I'm reading it. I think I have favorite characters, not favorite books. Edith Dombey, for one."

"Now, that's unusual. Why her?"

"She's so…proud and sad and tragic. I like Lady Dedlock for the same reason. The tragedy of them, and the beauty. Also the vivid characters. He did write _such_ vivid characters, and they weren't always the main characters or the heroes." She laughed softly again. "Often they were the antagonists."

"Like Mr. Pecksniff?"

"_Yes!_ He _makes_ that book! I want to _kick _him every time he enters a scene, and I love hating him, because I would never be able to kick him in real life."

His mouth tipped to the side in his wry smile. "Nor would I. Which is why reading him in fiction is so pleasurable."

"Exactly."

At that moment, they both realized that it was their turn at the counter and the barista was leaning his elbows on it listening quizzically.

"I'm sorry," Grace apologized.

"No problem. Who's Mr. Pecksniff?"

"A character from _Martin Chuzzlewit,_ by Charles Dickens."

"In that case, what'll you have?"

"Tea. I suppose I should have figured out which I wanted before I got here."

"You were busy talking about Dickens, so you're forgiven."

"What if we had been talking about Dostoevsky?" Grace's new friend asked.

The boy made a face. "Not forgiven. Lit major," he said in explanation. "Never read _Martin Chuzzlewit,_ though."

"Not many people have."

"Sencha," Grace said definitively.

"In a pot to share?"

"Well…"

"Yes, please." The man brought out his wallet and passed over a credit card.

"Have a seat. Choose your teacup from the wall. I'll bring it out when the water is at the requisite 162°."

"Will you choose a table?"

Grace nodded and went to the wall of teacups, chose two that were elegant, old-fashioned, and unchipped, and found a small table near the bookshelves. The man soon joined her, bearing, with his book, a basket of tiny scones.

"I didn't know what you might like, so I purchased an assortment."

She realized she was starving. Now if she could just keep herself from gobbling up the whole basket… She chose orange-cranberry.

The tea came just behind him, and she got up to get some sugar. The barista gave her a shocked look.

_"Sugar_ in green tea? I may have to withdraw my forgiveness."

"I just like it with sugar," she said, slightly defensively.

The man sitting opposite her was emptying a packet into his teacup. The barista winced and went away.

"I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes it sweet."

"I'm not sure if I do or not." He poured tea in her cup and his, stirred, and tasted. "Yes, I do. I usually drink Ceylon or Yunnan, but I may have to switch to sencha."

He liked Dickens and sencha. Over the top of her cup, she looked at his odd face and the way his hair stood straight up and the neatness of his suit and glasses and thought, _Why he's adorable._ And then she blushed as only red-haired persons can when she caught his large eyes catching her looking at him. "I'm Grace," she said. "I don't know your name."

"Oh, how discourteous of me. My name is Harold Bird."


End file.
